If you've looked at Alicita's recent post on Gaetano Pesce's architecturally inspired sofa, Notturno a New York, then you have a fresh sense of how intriguing it can be when designers model their creations on a familiar paradigm. When this paradigm also happens to be exceedingly strange-and there's perhaps none stranger than the inscrutable skyline of Manhattan-it can be exponentially intriguing. Such is the case with Daniel Becker's Sparks lighting modules. I like to think of these LED-laden architectural nodes as a companion piece to Notturno, but while the former represents a microcosm of the city, the latter is an emblem of the building blocks of nature.

Sparks. Designed by Daniel Becker.

A Network of LED Lamps with a Branching Habit

The above reference tends toward generalization, since Becker's linear network of cobwebbing light sticks might pass for many of nature's discernible forms, but they suggest on several levels the process of duplication that characterizes growth. Sparks is a simple design. Single, double, and triple lights grace the ends of individual modules. Each of these rotates a full 360 degrees about the axis of its base, and each of these in turn can be joined with companion modules-easily pieced together like so many Tinkertoys. The result is a kaleidoscopic expanse of trios of triangular light.

But back to that notion about the inevitable expanse of nature. The angular inclination of Sparks encourages creative assemblages that mimic organic processes. Thus, when one gets to playing around, a network of criss-crossing filaments soon emerges. These are prone to resemble any number of natural phenomena: the careful construction of a spider's web; the intricate infrastructure of capillaries and veins-conduits for the light of life; or, and a timely one this, the brambled branches of a deciduous tree at the onset of winter, primed for some graceful soul to come along and embellish it with the inspired illumination of the season.